Susannah Douglas

Susannah Douglas is an English artist, born in Belfast in 1981. She lives and works in London.
She obtained her Master of Fine Arts at Wimbledon College of Art and her bachelors at Falmouth College of Art.

Susannah Douglas's favorite medium is drawing and is mainly focused on representing the human figure through conventional portraits. Her creations ask questions, like: how can conventions aspire uniqueness, all the while promoting the generic?

The artist collects photos from various sources: photocopies of anthropological works of art history, unknown portraits and images found on the internet. These fragments are then put together, and the artist analyzes their poses, gestures, clothes and composition. Depending on her collages, the artist meticulously draws. The fragility of the drawing makes the relationship with the original one even more difficult, all the while maintaining the desire for uniqueness, as it's done by hand.

For Susannah Douglas, we all have a photo in mind of our school uniform, blowing our birthday candles, or sitting tightly for a family portrait. These photos are major building steps of our personal history. She reveals our desire to define key moments of our life. But what can one do with these unique moments in a mass society where reproduction and repetition seem to be the rule?

Therefore, these portraits become conventional, and not unique captured moments of life. These norms transform into traditions and traditions are factors of stability. Works of Susannah Douglas try to explore this paradoxical aspect.

Recently, Susannah Douglas exhibited at the Griffin Gallery Open in London (2015), Florence Trust gallery in London (2015), Link Gallery Halifax (2015), at the London Art Fair (2015), the Charlie Smith Gallery (2014), the Victoria House in London (2014), not to mention the Peek a Boo Gallery in Perth, Australia (2014).